CognitiveBias FAQs

What does cognitive bias mean? How is it a root cause of gender injustice? Cognitive bias is a fancy way of saying making predictable kinds of mistakes when you think about something. The term comes from the related fields of cognitive science, psychology, and behavioral economics, all of which study how our brains work. Researchers in all these fields ask questions like How do we perceive information about the world? How do we remember it? and How do we make decisions? One of the co-founders of Gender Justice, Jill Gaulding, began her professional life as a cognitive science student at MIT, long enough ago that the label cognitive science was still new. When she left her scientific career path for a career in public interest law, she thought she was leaving cognitive science behind. Not so. It turns out that discrimination in the workplace, for example, often arises from cognitive bias, as decision-makers are influenced consciously or unconsciously by their biased perceptions and expectations. A study done in 1990 showed one way this can happen. The psychologists running the study trained male and female students to follow an exact script in response to a What 10 things to take to the moon exercise, so that their language and behavior during the exercise would be as identical as possible. They then secretly placed these trained students into groups of other students the real study participants and instructed all of the students to work through the exercise together. At the end of the study, the psychologists could compare the participants responses to male and female leadership behavior. The results of the study would shock anyone belonging to the sex-discrimination-is-a-thing-of-the-past camp. In short, the study found that even consciously egalitarian people both men and women tend to perceive women negatively when they adopt an assertive leadership style, apparently because the categories of assertive leader and woman invoke clashing stereotypes in our brains. The study also showed that both male and female observers tend to demonstrate negative affect (that is, negative facial expressions and body language) when they encounter women leaders. In the real world, this negative affect can contribute to a kind of feedback loop which discourages women from taking on leadership roles (I dont know why, exactly, but I get the feeling I am not doing this quite right). The advocates at Gender Justice consider it vital that public policy and anti-discrimination law reflect what scientists have been learning in recent years about cognitive bias. Indeed, this shared belief is what first brought the two co-founders, Lisa Stratton and Jill Gaulding, together, as they discovered their shared passion for modernizing and rationalizing the concept of intent under laws like Title VII.

But how can we fight cognitive bias, if it is pervasive and unconscious? It does sound like a tall order. However, it is not impossible. The scientists studying cognitive bias have also been studying something they call de-biasing. Debiasing means changing a situation or procedure (such as a hiring process) so that cognitive bias is less likely to affect the outcome. Sometimes de-biasing can be quite simple. For years, for example, orchestras believed that women just werent as musically talented as men, since they did not do as well in auditions. But women suddenly did better in auditions and were hired in greater numbers, when the auditions were conducted with a screen in place, so that the evaluators did not know the sex of the person auditioning. Of course, the women were not suddenly playing their instruments better. Rather, the evaluators were able to hear and evaluate skill more accurately, once the influence of cognitive bias was removed. One of the ways we can enhance equal opportunity in the workplace is to expect employers to follow best practices when it comes to de-biasing techniques. If screens at auditions make auditions more accurate and less biased, why shouldnt we expect orchestras to use them? Likewise with blind review of resumes,

the use of structured interviews, posting job opportunities widely rather than relying on word-of-mouth announcements, and so forth. Wouldnt it be better to get rid of the cultural influences that create the underlying bias, rather than relying on de-biasing techniques, after the fact? Ideally, yes. But can we change society enough so that our brains never have a chance to absorb sexist stereotypes, and therefore avoid any risk of cognitive bias? Not in our lifetimes. That does not mean we should not try. In fact, this is one reason why the founders of Gender Justice wanted to create a nonprofit advocacy organization, rather than a law firm focused on gender discrimination. An advocacy organization can do more than sue employers or schools that discriminate. It can also communicate with the people who create our cultural environment, such as advertisers or others in the media, to explain cognitive bias to them and ask them to stop reinforcing stereotypes and misogynist ideas. Suppose, for example, that beer ads no longer focused on the horror of being girlie. (Bud Light, were talkin to you.) It wouldnt end gender injustice, but it would be one step in the right direction. And sometimes you can do more than just ask. Sometimes you can insist that gender slurs cease and desist, because theyre not just offensive theyre illegal. One prime example of this type of actionable gender slur is the Pink Locker Room.

Whats the Pink Locker Room? And why would it be illegal? Back in the early 1980s, the famous football coach at the University of Iowa, Hayden Fry, had a great idea: why not decorate the visiting teams locker room entirely in pink? In his autobiography, he explained that he had heard that pink had been proven to have a passive effect. But he also explained that pink is often found in girls bedrooms, and because of that some consider it a sissy color. In other words, Coach Fry thought it would be a great idea to make the visiting teams locker room pink because that was a way of calling the opposing team sissies (or, following Bud Light, girlies). Professional sports teams often use pink in a similar way not to shame the other team, but to shame their own players. Some teams, like the Seattle Mariners and the Boston Red Sox, make their rookies carry a pink backpack. Other teams, like the Washington Capitals hockey team, have a special pink helmet for the player who performs worst during practice. Using the color pink (or anything else associated with women or girls) as a shaming device is actually as common outside the sports world as within it. Recently, for example, it has become popular to use pink in mens prisons. Sometimes officials state that this will calm the inmates, but just as often officials admit (or brag) that the pink items are meant to shame inmates to make prison even more punitive, so that inmates will be less likely to return. And its not just Americans who think gender shaming is a great idea. Officials in Thailand, for example, recently decided to discipline police officers who break work rules by forcing them to wear hot pink armbands decorated with Hello Kitty. A police official explained: Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense. [Hello] Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. Its not something macho police officers want covering their biceps. The advocates at Gender Justice have at least as good a sense of humor as your average feminist. However, we are not amused by all these uses of pink, because we know that just like Bud Lights girlies ad they serve to reinforce misogynist ideas. And when an institution like a university is involved, we believe the joke violates laws like Title VII (which requires employers to treat its employees equally) and Title IX (which requires schools to treat its students equally). Thats why we have the University of Iowas Pink Locker Room in our sights and plan to have it on our docket soon, as part of our effort to target the root causes of gender injustice. Jill Gaulding, one of the co-founders of Gender Justice, is especially eager to bring that case, since she was one of two professors at Iowa who protested the Pink Locker Room in 2005, when the University decided to rebuild Coach Frys original room and make it even pinker. A great hullabaloo arose at the time (if one

can refer to controversies involving hate mail and threats of denial of tenure as a hullabaloo), which created a terrific opportunity for educating the public about cognitive bias. A lawsuit against the University brought on behalf of Gender Justice is bound to create an even greater teachable moment.

How does Gender Justice combat the most serious economic consequences of gender injustice? The majority of the cases on our litigation docket involve equal opportunity at work. This is not because we think other feminist issues like reproductive choice or domestic violence are unimportant. They clearly are important. Furthermore, all of these issues are inter-connected its hard to have equal opportunity at work unless you can make choices about reproduction, for example. But our special expertise lies in workplace law. We think we can have the greatest impact there. Within the field of workplace law, we concentrate on cases involving low-income, immigrant, and bluecollar workers. There are several reasons for this. For one, these are the workers who struggle most to gain access to justice. Low-wage workers in discrimination cases are generally awarded smaller damage awards than high-wage earners, which means they have less ability to engage a contingent fee lawyer. Immigrant workers face similar challenges, since cultural and language barriers make it more difficult for them to find a lawyer and make their cases more expensive to litigate. As a nonprofit advocacy organization, Gender Justice can help fill this gap in access. We also concentrate our resources on these types of cases because of what economists tell us about the wage gap. Discrimination occurs throughout the economy, in every type of job category. And it is certainly unjust when, say, a female surgeon is denied a promotion to head of surgery, because of a preference for male surgeons. However, economists have shown that the greater portion of the wage gap resides in the bottom half of the economic pyramid, rather than at its peak. A large part of the problem is job segregation the more job segregation, the more income disparity. Thats why it is especially important to de-gender lower wage and blue collar jobs. People like Charlotte Mitchell will never be equal at work until we stop thinking that jobs like pulp-dryer fireman are not a womans job. Lisa Stratton, one of the co-founders of Gender Justice, has special expertise in this area. As Director of the Workers Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota, for example, she led the team of student attorneys who successfully litigated Charlotte Mitchells precedent-setting case against American Crystal Sugar. Earlier in her career, Lisa represented Nancy Stanina, a trailblazer like Charlotte Mitchell who worked at the Blandin paper mill in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Nancy Stanina overcame sexual harassment by her coworkers, sex discrimination in job assignments, and retaliation. She was the first woman to work in the yard at Blandin, where the logs were handled and the pay was better, and she eventually became Blandins first woman crane operator. Lisa began her litigation career at the law firm Sprenger & Lang, which represented the women in the Minnesota Iron Range who sued Eveleth Mines for sex discrimination and sexual harassment. Their story was so horrific, and ultimately so inspiring, that it provided the basis for the critically acclaimed movie North Country. At Gender Justice, we want to continue representing heroes like the women of North County, Nancy Stanina, Charlotte Mitchell, Marisol Hernandez, Anna OConnor, Erin Green, and Brie Anderson.